Microsoft is focusing more and more on Power Shell and this is what is done with Search in SharePoint 2013. Graphical interface in SharePoint Search application is not available. We cannot create and edit topology from Central administration. Only option is to use Power Shell.

Till SharePoint 2010 we have the option to configure and scale Search Service application using Central administration.

There is not much difference to configure Search in Standalone or farm mode. The thing in Farm mode is to scale out the all the component except (Search Admin Component) as it cannot be scaled out and the other is to create it in partitioned mode.

To Create Search in Farm and scale out mode. I will write the same after this article.

List of Components which need to be kept in mind while creating and Configuring Search Service Application are:

To create a SharePoint Search Service Application( This is the only part which can also be done using Central Administration)

To Create a SSA(Search Service Application) Proxy( It will be created automatically using GUI but need to create manually using Power Shell)

Till this part you can also do with GUI Central admin. You will find 3 Service application in the list, below is screenshot for the same.

Search Topology command

Rest all configuration need to be done with power shell. With this a Search Topology is created and topology cannot be modified in active state. To create other component we need to create a clone of the current topology and work on it and once all things are finalized we can activate that topology.

As we are using Standalone environment there is no need for index partition and replica. We can directly create index component as others.
Note: For Scale out I will surely add a new article very soon.

There should be one modification required :
The line $SPServiceApplication = New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Name $SPSearchServiceName -ApplicationPool “Learning\Test1” -DatabaseName $SPDatabaseName